Mick Thomas

The Last Of The Tourists

The Last Of The Tourists is an album about the passing of time and ultimately those around us, but it also symbolises a wake-up call rather than a wake, a celebration rather than commiserations.

As the frontman for seminal Aussie group Weddings Parties Anything and an established solo artist in his own right, Mick Thomas is renowned as a storyteller.

Boasting an ear for rich, warmly-weathered folk and a knack for nailing the minutiae of Australian life without resorting to clichés, his potent reflections have revealed quiet revelations for decades.

Here on his new album The Last Of The Tourists, the fourteenth studio album of his career, those stories are more autobiographical, more acute and more bittersweet than ever before. It’s the sound of a man taking a long, hard look at love, life and loss in the face of losing both parents in recent years, embodied most evidently on the pensive farewell ‘Goodbye Slowly’.

“All of the sudden, you’re the oldest person in your life,” Mick reveals candidly. “For a long time, age doesn’t worry you, turning 30 or 40 or whatever, you just keep batting away but now I often find myself as the oldest person in the room.”

Dealing with life’s cruel blows has taught Mick a lot - savour what you’ve got, hold your family and friends close and never be afraid to take risks. It’s the latter lesson that shaped this album, urging him to leave behind the usual suspects he’d collaborated with over the last ten years and strike out in a new direction.

“This is the first album I’ve done where I haven’t walked into it with a band behind me, so in a sense it’s my first solo record,” he reflects.
That new path led to working with Sydney singer-songwriter Darren Hanlon who would produce the album. Surprisingly, the pair go way back - Darren often supported Weddings back in the mid-90s with his old band The Simpletons before touring with Mick through Europe for a year after the Weddings broke up in 1999.

“I was so happy to be working with Darren, even if it did raise a few eyebrows,” says Mick. “Underneath that boyish shrug of the shoulders is a really strong work ethic and he’s constantly finding new ways to work.It was such a really genuinely casual but productive affair. It was an absolute joy.”

With Darren pushing Mick to delve deeper into the more personal songs he’d penned but dismissed, the two travelled to the Type Foundry studio in Portland, Oregon and laid them down in just five days. They assembled a band as they went, with Hanlon playing bass, engineer Adam Selzer drums and Weddings’ Mark Wallace on keys, marking the first time in a decade he and Mick had recorded together. Portland natives and friends of Darren; Alia Farah and Shelley Short, also played piano and contributed vocals.
“I wanted to see where the songs took us this time,” says Mick. “You make a record like this and it makes you glad you’re alive and making music and makes you start thinking about the next one. I don’t know if you get gun-shy at my stage of the game and start thinking maybe you’ve made all the records you’ve got to make, but this one made me feel really energised.”

‘At my stage of the game’ is a phrase Mick uses often when you talk to him and it’s one that harks back to that theme of time passing and enjoying every minute. No doubt with Weddings and playing solo, Mick’s kicked plenty of goals in his career, but buoyed by the spontaneity and free spirit of this latest project, he’s determined to kick plenty more before the whistle blows.

“This is certainly not my last album,” he professes. “There’s plenty more stories to be told, and I'm already juggling several other projects. People ask ‘is it your best record?’ and it’s not really for me to judge. My role as an artist is pretty simple - to keep writing songs and making records and the rest is in the hands of others…”

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